Vanishing of Ethan Carter
polycounter lvl 9
Just stumbled upon this.
Game looks really impressive as far as art goes, and they have some interesting tech.
http://www.theastronauts.com/2014/03/visual-revolution-vanishing-ethan-carter/
http://ethancartergame.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsHppcIcpfM&feature=youtu.be
Game looks really impressive as far as art goes, and they have some interesting tech.
http://www.theastronauts.com/2014/03/visual-revolution-vanishing-ethan-carter/
http://ethancartergame.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsHppcIcpfM&feature=youtu.be
Replies
Look at some of their props on the link where they talk about it. its very impressive stuff.
I'm sure there are people who would enjoy doing that - I enjoy painting textures too much to replace it with zbrush bakes!
I always did want to make stylized horror games. Something aimed at 12-13 year olds. Like those old goosebump books, but games.
Plus it's PRETTY....
Edit: Turns out some assets are purposefully unrealistic for the mood. More mind blow.
I played with Photoscan a bit a while ago but would need to buy a better camera to really make use of it. Mine is cheap and too noisy and low resolution, so the algorithm has a hard time finding matching patterns. Even so it's impressive and very handy.
So far I've seen it more as tool for getting 3d references.
Ideally you have a covered sky so there is no direct lighting on the object. Shiny objects don't really work, since the specular reflection depends on the position of the camera and throws off the pattern recognition. Maybe with polarisation filters. Even then you had to work on the textures considerably if you wanted to have a fully shaded 3d object in the end. My guess is they went only half the way here, in order to save time.
I remember seeing a camera which can get more or less all necessary surface and material information, but I don't know right now if Photoscan would allow to replace the photos used, so you could get different texture channels out of the same projection.
Pretty cool tech
Edit: Wouldn't there be potential for trouble photo genning a church and gravestones for games? I remember some game falling into trouble for merely recreating a church before.
some gameplay
But the interior scene was rather fantastic.
This is the kind of game I'd love to work on; moving the medium forward, and trying new things. And Weird fiction is involved.
I'm so excited that I'll love it even if it sucks. And I'm ok with that.
I really don't need the game to tell me that the massively obvious trail of blood is a blood trail and I certainly don't need the words to swirl around the screen for several seconds. Also not a fan of the whole, posing questions to you (again, by having them swirl around the screen) rather than you just asking them yourself.
That being said I could still see it being a nice story and interesting to play, I'm just not expecting it to be so much a mystery/puzzle exploration game as I am expecting it to be a slightly interactive walkthrough of a movie.
Missing the days of Myst and even Morrowind's find locations by reading horrible directions in a journal.
I can see myself playing this game and really enjoying it, but constantly saying to myself "Shut up Ethan I'm trying to figure out this weird shit over here."
Remember, though, that this is the a playthrough by the developer.
If you were playing the game and were shown just the surroundings of the metal piece (through this swirling vision), I doubt you'll instantly know where to find it. Chmielarz knows, because his team played it thousand times.
Plus, he definitely wanted to progress through the game quickly, fluently, because he's got only this many minutes to show the game
I absolutely agree. For me, that's the whole point of going indie. Of taking the risk. In the long term, I see it also as a basic goal of entering any creative field as well.
True, but these points have nothing to do with the words-thinking gameplay mechanics. You may choose to pursue 'alternate' clues and explore 'side quests', but the game will still direct your experience by relating to its own agenda. More specifically, the way it relates seems so trivial at some points that it makes me feel the game is catered towards the 'click X to solve this puzzle' genre that is becoming widespread. It's like those assassin games that give you invisiblity/x-ray/super jump powers by activating 'sneak mode'. There! sneaking accomplished.
This is probably the only indie game I know that uses CryEngne and is not a FPS. As technically this itself is a technical success
Where did you come up with that? It uses UE3.
Actually, no, using your example of the metal piece (crank, I assume) - my understanding of the mechanic based on the video was that the words literally swirl around - and as you move your camera around they converge when you're looking at the exact location/direction of the object in question. This is what "unlocks" the vision of it being on the shore. So not only do you know it's on a shore with all of those clues obtained through the vision itself, but when the vision is over you're staring in the exact direction you need to head towards to find it.
Though, that wasn't my main hesitation with the gameplay video (though it was slightly disappointing, as I think the vision of the shore itself would have been enough of a clue) - as shotgun said it was the game labeling everything with text and telling you what you should be wondering by throwing the questions up on the screen as you examine something. It seemed basically like those games where the main character is constantly talking out loud while you play (also kind of annoying), except with text instead of a voiceover and the text telling you what to do to solve everything.
It's possible that the example in the video is extreme, especially if it does actually occur very soon after the beginning of the game, but the commentary seemed like they were pretty happy with those mechanics.
I am EXTREMELY SORRY. Please forgive me. I am not myself these days.
But boy, these environment... hell.
First, you have the problem with lighting. Even when it's overcast, you still have lots of soft contact shadows, AO and all in the scan (well visible with the statue). With wildly differing real-time lighting in a game, it's bound to look bad at some point. You'd have to take the photographs at night with a soft diffuse flash to avoid it.
Then, it takes quite some time to take the photos, calculate the point cloud, do all the texture baking, etc. Is sculpting and texturing a gravestone really that much work? Somebody who's really good at sculpting and texturing can probably crank out smaller assets like this faster than even the baking process takes.
As somebody else mentioned, the scanning won't work for shiny materials, marble, glass, metal etc. So you're already quite limited in your choice of assets and environments.
Until recently, newcomers who liked to do realistic stuff were also mainly drawn to AAA, because realistic realtime graphics were simply not viable (nor interesting) for smaller indies, though I think this is slowly changing.
This technique pretty much gets rid of the design aspect, as far as the individual asset is concerned. (Of course not completely, but cleaning up and preparing and optimizing the assets for the engine is pretty much a technical task.)
If you manage to come up with a game that fits around this technique and maybe a landscape which is near your home, you're pretty much set with one or two central artists, who assemble the scenes and maybe pick the assets and adjust them later for the scene. You could send anyone who can hold a camera and is able to follow a few guidelines to capture the objects.(Though mainly this will be just one or two persons doing it all. And as a bonus you get to be out in the fresh air and exploring if your game matches that topic.)
No need for concepts, no need for iterations, and you could do the optimization in house, too, if you wanted to.
Bigger studios had to do it more cleanly and organized like they do with scanning in likenesses. But I agree that it probably makes not much sense for them to scan in most of the objects needed for a whole level.
oh no, you turned into an old man right before our eyes!
That is the best description I've read in awhile :thumbup:
SURPRISE! People have different tastes.
Frankly, I like that "interactive experiences" have become a thing. This, Dear Esther, the Stanley Parable, and others recently have all barely fit into the traditional idea of what a game is, and I find them wonderful. I don't have a ton of time to play games anymore because I'm a goddamn grownup and I have actual responsibilities and things that I want to do outside of the house. I want more games that will let me play through them in a short amount of time and get a nice succinct experience that isn't bogged down by ZOMG ACHIEVEMENTS MULTIPLAYER DOUBLE PRESTIGE GOLD AK-47 CASTLE OF THE BOOB QUEEN DLC!!!!!!11!
Anyway, enough of being a grouch.
Fucking loved this game. Initially I was a bit leery of using scan data in a non-photoreal context, but I got over that real quick. The lighting is soft and gorgeous, the use of scan data makes everything look like an extremely atmospheric realist painting, and the overall composition and layout of most areas (aside from the caves) makes basically every second look beautiful. I also enjoyed the overall creepy Lovecraftian feeling of the story and setting.
Gameplay-wise, I thought a lot of things it did were really clever, though I think some aspects of solving the murders and other scenes could have been fleshed out a little better. I would've liked a lot more small puzzles to solve as well, but that's a minor complaint.
It's fine that a game is short and focuses on the story. I can understand that. What is not fine is making it so that you can't change anything or do anything worthwhile. In those games there's no puzzle to solve, no people to talk to, there's no substance outside of a linear story. In Ethan Carter you can't even interact with anything if it's not a story element. It's like playing Final Fantasy XIII without the gameplay at all. That doesn't seem like fun game at all.
When your game has less interactivity than graphic novels, there's something wrong with your game.
Ethan Carter says specifically, that it's a game that doesn't hold your hand. But after an hour I found it to be a half-truth. You can only go where you want in non-linear fashion, but it means nothing. You can't solve murders differently or fail them at all.
Well look, i do sort of have same opinion with TWD game,i don't like it for that reason as well.
But, you do have visual novels and people seems to be rather crazy about it. This goes a a step farther, so i don't see it really being a wrong thing.
I personally don't like it, but obviously there are poeple who do. And if visual novels are rather popular and interesting, why shouldn't such games too?
It's not for you and me, but there are people who likes such types of storycentric games.
I'd personally prefer if games explored other options that didn't hurt gameplay. Tale of two sons had some really awesome ideas near the end, how they medge the core gampleay and player input device as story-telling mechanics, that was just brilliant.
There's nothing wrong with the genre (walking simulator), but it should be more than just placing a player into a role of an onlooker. It should be more. There needs to be something to do, not just walk around.
Maybe I'm an old fart already at 24, but I'd rather go for a walk than play this game. There's nothing worth playing here for me. If I want a story, I'll read a book or watch a movie. At least when I watch a movie I don't have to walk around while doing so.
Interesting question: if I go for a walk outside with an mp3 player with an audiobook on it, am I inside a video game?
also:
If there's zombie outbreak, i'd guess it is a game. :P